Tv' Fail Safe

George Clooney, Noah Wyle, Richard Dreyfuss, Harvey Keitel, Hank Azaria, Brian Dennehy, James Cromwell, Sam Elliott, Don Cheadle and John Diehl have joined the cast of FAIL SAFE, the live television event to be broadcast Sunday, April 9 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET [delayed PT]) on the CBS Television Network. 

The drama is based on the 1962 best-selling novel of the same title, in which Cold War tensions climb to a fever pitch when a U.S. bomber is accidentally ordered to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow.  Walter Bernstein, who wrote the screenplay for the 1964 film based on the classic novel by Harvey Wheeler and Eugene Burdick, returns to write the screenplay for the live broadcast, which will be directed by Stephen Frears.

Colonel Jack Grady (Clooney) is a U.S. Air Force bomber pilot assigned to what he imagines to be another routine flight.  At the same time, in the Omaha War Room, Colonels Bogan (Dennehy) and Cascio (Diehl) and Gordon Knapp (Cromwell), one of the developers of the computer defense systems used by the U.S. military, are giving a tour of the facility to Congressman Tom Raskob (Elliott).  Bogan points out an unidentified flying object on the radar, but assumes that they will be able to identify it shortly, as they always do.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon War Room, pilot Warren ABlackie@ Black (Keitel) and his fellow war  advisors are monitoring the same blip on the radar, but remain unconcerned.  Coincidentally, on this morning, Professor Groteschele (Azaria) has joined the group to discuss the topic of accidental war.

Just seconds before the fail-safe point at which bombers are ordered into action, the U.F.O. is identified as a lost plane and the bombers are called in.  But a computer malfunction has caused the light to flash on Grady=s fail-safe box, enforcing his group of planes to follow orders corresponding
to a special code -- in this case, to bomb Moscow.  The War Room staff desperately attempts to contact the planes, but the signals are jammed. 

Finally, the U.S. president (Dreyfuss) is alerted.  With the help of his advisors at the Pentagon and a young translator named Buck (Wyle), he tries to convince the Russian Chairman that the U.S. bombers are headed toward his capital due to a mechanical failure, not as an attempt to provoke war.  But as Grady=s plane nears its target, the U.S. president is forced to do the unthinkable in order to prevent the start of World War III.

FAIL SAFE is being produced by George Clooney's Maysville Pictures, in association with Warner Bros. Television. George Clooney, Pam Williams and Laura Ziskin are the executive producers; Tom Park is the producer.
FAIL SAFE is sponsored in part by Ford Motor Company's Ford Division, which is represented by Ford Motor Media and J. Walter Thompson, and by State Farm Insurance Companies, which are represented by DDB Worldwide.